The latest CIA document dump also provides more background on how Abu Zubaydah got subjected to extended sleep deprivation long before it was approved. PDF page 113-114 explains:

After consulting with the NSC and DOJ, CTC[redacted] originally approved 24-48 hours of sleep deprivation.

In April 2002 CTC[redacted] learned that due to a misunderstanding, that time frame had been exceeded.

However, CTC[redacted] advised that since the process did not have adverse medical effects or result in hallucinations (thereby disrupting profoundly Abu Zubaydah’s senses or personality) it was within legal parameters.

There a number of important points about this.

First, note the timing: April. When AZ was still recovering from bullet wounds and surgery.

This was also the same time period when (oops!) Binyam Mohamed was being subjected to extended sleep deprivation, presumably pursuant to the same kind of “misunderstanding.”

But also note the language. The “profoundly disrupt the senses or personality” is the language on severe mental suffering that John Yoo gave John Rizzo on July 13, 2002, which Jonathan Fredman sent to the torturers as their guideline on torture. It seems likely, then, that this (oops!) sleep deprivation was the “incident” that CIA was so concerned about as they were writing the Bybee Memos.

I’m wondering if they used Hanni 1, Hanni 2 or Hanni 3 as the baseline personality that was being disrupted.

With the establishment regarding how long such policies have been practiced, I cannot tolerate reading another, “You do not know what it was like after 9-11.” And I imagine we will here this excuse again and soon.

The “profoundly disrupt the senses or personality” is the language on severe mental suffering that John Yoo gave John Rizzo on July 13, 2002, which Jonathan Fredman sent to the torturers as their guideline on torture. It seems likely, then, that this (oops!) sleep deprivation was the “incident” that CIA was so concerned about as they were writing the Bybee Memos.

It also speaks to the fact that the DoJ Opinions were written interactively with the CIA Interrogators.

DoJ says 24-48 hours. Whoops, they’ve done more [11 days?] without AZ becoming openly psychotic [hallucinating]. Ergo, Yoo puts 11 days in his Memo [the result of the procedure becomes the standard for the approval for the procedure].

From page 11 – 4 August 2003 – it sounds like there are more than one set of videotapes:

…Final disposition of material. Please note that inventory list should only contain listing of magnetic media from [redacted] project and not/not the videotapes in [redacted] possession. Thanks and regards…

From page 12 – 18 July 2003 – note the fact that they’re talking about the “disposition” of both videotapes and hard drives:

24-48 hours means something else not continuous hours awake but possibly 4 hours of sleep deprivation per day which would be 6-12 days. I heard a guard on NPR, way back, describe it as 16 hours on, 4 off, cutting 4 hours off of the normal 8 hour sleep cycle per day and also extremely disorienting.

Other wise they keep mentioning it’s legal to destroy the tapes, meaning this was done before the court wanted them preserved ?

That first email is dated 04/27/2002. It mentions “tapes.” Were they taping from the get-go? It implies that the tapes were being sent somewhere [“arrive here”]. Where is “here”? Is this email from Langley? Are the things being sent the electronic copies?

And folks should really read and strongly ponder this from Part 3 page 16 (57 page PDF):

…11/10/2005 07:25 PM

To: Dusty Foggo
cc:
Subject: short backgrounder – part 2

Dusty – ok – on the Zubaydah tapes – – I am no longer feeling comfortable. While I understand Jose’s ‘decision’ (and believe the tapes were bad news) I was just told by Rizzo that [redacted] DID NOT concur on the cable – it was never discussed with him (this is perhaps worse news, in that we may have ‘improperly’ destroyed something). In fact, it is unclear now whether the [halfway redacted 2 characters – IG] did as well. Cable was apparently drafted by [redacted 4-6 characters] and released by Jose; they are only two names on it, so I am told by Rizzo. Either [redacted 4-6 characters] lied to Jose about ‘clearing’ with [redacted word] and [halfway redacted 2 characters – IG] (my bet) or Jose misstated the facts. (It is not without relevance that [redacted 4-6 characters] figured prominently in the tapes, as [redacted 4-6 characters] was in charge of [redacted word] at the time and clearly would want the tapes destroyed.) Rizzo is cleary upset, because he was on the hook to nofity Harriet Miers of the status of the tapes because it was she who asked to be advised before any action was taked. Apparently, Rizzo called Harriet this afternoon and she was livid, which he said was actually unusual for her. Rizzo does not think this is likely to just go away. Rizzo has advised [redacted 3-4 characters] of this latest ‘wrinkle.’ Sounds like we will regroup on Monday…

(My Bold)

As this was written on the Thursday evening before Veterans Day holiday on Friday, consider this the CIA’s own virtual Friday document dump to themselves. *g*

“[…] The IRF team stopped at the detainee’s cell and lined up in single file outside it. The team leader in front drenched the prisoner with pepper spray and then opened the cell door. The others charged in and rushed the detainee with the shield as protection. The point was to get him to the ground as quickly as possible, with whatever means necessary—shields, boots, or fists.[…]”

But I was just reading yesterday that at least one American soldier [in 2007] did not even have to be “captured” by the enemy to have been subjected to torture: isolation for more than 30 days, sleep deprivation and forced injection of medication.

“They told me I wasn’t a real soldier, that I was a piece of crap. All I wanted was to be treated for my injuries. Now suddenly I’m not a soldier. I’m a prisoner, by my own people,” says Luther, his voice tightening. “I felt like a caged animal in that room. That’s when I started to lose it.”

Then he’s offered a “deal”:

Eventually Luther was brought to his commander, who told him he had a choice: he could sign papers saying his medical problems stemmed from personality disorder or face more time in isolation.

A bit OT to this post, but germane to the overall – do we know at what point Durham on the tapes (his Mukasey appointment) switched over from invistigation to convening a Grand Jury?

I don’t really expect anything of Durham and haven’t paid much attention on the procedural details, but it looks like his original mandate from Mukasey was pretty narrow (torture tape destruction only and criminal acts only – not, for example, any prof conduct/DOJ/CIA lawyers issues and of course, those weren’t involved in the equally narrow OPR mandate looking into the drafting of the memos, but not interactions of DOJ involved in torture with Congress and Courts).

For that narrow mandate, which was IIRC authorized as a criminal investigation, he was supposed to report to the DAG, at the time, Filip. After Holder came in, that would have been Ogden (who left in Feb of this year). Ogden received support during his nomination proceedings from an assortment of names related to DOJ/CIA torture, and guys who have a lot of vested interest in making sure they kept their “good guy” status. Larry Thompson, Daniel Levin, John Bellinger – the roman numeral collector, and one who hasn’t managed to really make anyone’s good guys list but has managed to float under the radar on the bad guys list – Peter Keisler. He did also get the nod from another Wilmer Hale lawyer, though, Seth Waxman, who has been involved in GITMO representation.

So with Ogden gone in Feb, then, presumably, Acting DAG, Grindler (who got to go to Congress and explain why the Margolis turn down of any action under the OPR report was a *nuthin to see here* moment) is who Durham reports to directly on that original Mukasey appointment. But since it is all in-house, any or all of that could have changed at any time and without notice.

So after Ogden leaves in Feb (to faint fanfare but some grumblings that he didn’t get along with Holder) in March we start to get hints out of what had been a pretty tight, non-leaky Durham ship, about the immunity deal with McPherson and that a Rodriguez associate had testified before the GJ last year and that testimony was being “scrutinized” and now we get a bit more.

Meanwhile, Holder also appointed Durham for the prelim review on torture and that is – where? – do we know? Sitting on Margolis’ desk?

And I’m kinda wondering what Brinkema and some other judges who had outstanding discovery issues in their courts when the tapes were destroyed are going to want to know about McPherson’s immunity – which wouldn’t seem to reach his prof responsiblities issues to the court.

Oh well – I’ll sit back and watch EW and bmaz on this one and see how it all sorts out.

THIS CABLE HAS BEEN COORDINATED WITH [REDACTED] ON 05 SEPTEMBER 2002, HQS.- ELEMENTS DISCUSSED THE DISPOSITION OF THE VIDEOTAPES DOCUMENTING INTERROGATION SESSIONS WITH ((ABU ZUBAYDAH)) THAT ARE CURRENTLY BEING STORED AT… THE PARTICIPANTS OF THIS MEETING CONCLUDED THAT THE CONTINUED RETENTION OF THESE TAPES, WHICH IS NOT/NOT REQUIRED BY LAW, REPRESENTS A SERIOUS SECURITY RISK FOR… ACCORDINGLY, THE PARTICIPANTS DETERMINED THAT THE BEST ALTERNATIVE TO ELIMINATE THOSE SECURITY AND ADDITIONAL RISKS IS TO DESTROY THESE TAPES…

This meeting took place on the Thursday before the Sunday [September 8, 2002] when the Administration hit the airways in its march to invade Iraq [the “we don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud” Sunday]. Looks like they were cleaning up before the next phase…

I don’t know the answer to that. Obviously, there’s a way in which the answer might be “no.” After all, they could’ve never taped in the first place. But once the records existed, it was by their own admission a proof of something. They knew it and said it over and over. It’s easily argued that they destroyed the tapes to avoid prosecution. How is that different from Ollie North shredding documents he had created? Particularly with all this chatter about “to destroy or not to destroy”? But I expect there are a gajillion legal ways that legal guys have looked at such things in the past. Mercifully, the thought of going to law school passed quickly, and I chose another path…

You mean the tapes might show some sadist beating a prisoner to get them to confess to a connection between AQ and Iraq? I mean, there is an ‘a’ and a ‘q’ in each…”Why is that you m-fing terrorist?! Huh?! Huh?! You want some more?!” *vicious dog barking*

I mean, surely it doesn’t show something like a trumping up an excuse to invade Iraq, right?

And that wouldn’t be a crime, right?

Well, that would of course depend on whether there is any evidence and…

So the very first doc in the dump is an email (4/27/2002) saying that the tapes should be cataloged and made into official record copies (“When will the tapes of the interrogations arrive here? They should all be cataloged and made into official record copies”) but apparently later there wasn’t anyone who thought destruction of “official records” was a problem?

I guess, too, once that word “copies” is there, you have to wonder what the process was that rendered copies from the tapes.

And I’m kinda wondering what Brinkema and some other judges who had outstanding discovery issues in their courts when the tapes were destroyed…

Good point!

The offense of selling, conveying or disposing of government property without authority can be seen simply as one form of knowing conversion. Section 641 of Title 18, however, contains a separate prohibition against this conduct. To prove a violation of this prohibition the United States must show: that the defendant sold, conveyed or disposed of; property belonging to the United States; without authority to do so; and with knowledge that he did not have authority to do so.

2• DDO APPROVES REP A REQUEST TO DESTROY [redacted] VIDEO TAPES AS PROPOSED REF A FOR THE REASONS CITED THEREIN (THERE IS NO LEGAL OR OIG REQUIREMENT TO CONTINUE TO RETAIN TEE TAPES.) REQUEST THAT [redacted] ADVISE WHEN DESTRUCTION HAS BEEN COMPLETED. APPRECIATE STATION ASSISTANCE.

Hmm, who would have said there was no legal reason preventing destruction? The President? WHC? Whomever formulated that transmission and transmitted it and the person(s) who prompted that transmission would likely be guilty of obstruction, conspiracy, and a few other crimes having to do with retention of official records, etc.

This doesn’t even get us to the instances where prisoners died while being interrogated. But that’s another investigation everyone in power at the time–and possibly those in power now?–are trying to avoid…to the detriment of our Republic.

I wonder what the C Ref was that got added (in Dec?) after the Oct 2002 doc with only References A& B, which said destroy the tapes (that sounds as if they were already made into official records in April or May), since they are relying on the C Ref as the urgent reason not to destroy the tapes in that missive. Lots redacted, but while you see them saying don’t destroy the tapes, there doesn’t seem to be any modification of the prior coverup order to reuse the same tape every day so that they don’t create more until Mayish?

The copy that has routing and shows a CC to Muller and Rizzo- was McPherson as the guy who was going to review for conformity the blacked out third cc and if so, why is he redacted? Interesting to see Atty-Client show up on the doc describing review of the tapes for conformity – what client on what topic. Sounds like someone got bored, what with reviewing in the “play fast forward” mode. Did the reviewer (McPherson)have language skills, do we know, or a translator available?

The interview(McPherson?) has some good lawyerly take on what they may have meant by checking for conformity, “Yes they’re doing that. Yes, yes, it corresponds” doesn’t sound like a review for things that weren’t mentioned on the cable, just to make sure that the things that were mentioned are on there.

So sifting through a bit more, is Ref C the IG? There is a request for a cable from the IG authorizing the “ref” action and then the refs expand from A & B to include a C and a direction not to destroy.

So way back during the time Yoo was drafting his memos, in Aug 2002, all these CIA guys knew about, but were not providing to DOJ and Yoo wasn’t asking for, the videos. Hmmm.

In 07, there’s only one person who has access to and can pull up torture tapes cables being requested? Although they respond in the plural (“we were able to access most”)WTH is going on with them listing some cables on the torture program being “owned” by an entity not Gov? You have cables about highly classified info that are “owned” by someone else? Wah? (12/20/2007)

WTH is going on with them listing some cables on the torture program being “owned” by an entity not Gov?

Owned and pwned! The good stuff was free said the contractor with glee.

The situation where the corpus delicti must be proved by circumstantial evidence is rare and presents far greater problems than the situation where the only issue is the defendant’s participation in the offense.

That’s EXACTLYwhat they said they were going to do in Iran contra , I can hear the TREASONOUS BASTARD OLLIE saying what we need is a self financed, off the shelf, quick to go meaning, no congressional approval or oversight operation. Something to operate in the shadows.

This is what happens when people are too damn polite to demand prison for these TRAITOROUS FELONS. Time to amend this pardon shit in our constitution.

The 12-3-2007 doc that someone – redacted – “assured us that he gave regular updates to DoJ (i.e., John Yoo,redacted maybe Koester?)during this time frame (Aug 2002 Bybe memo drafting period) and DoJ was aware of the real numbers, but we were never able to verify this with DoJ, as INV mangement at the time elected not to interview witnesses outside the building” is pretty damn interesting.

And this is how splitting everything up into artificial mandates doesn’t work. So – if you have a person named (although currently redacted) as having, during the Aug 2002 drafting time frame being in touch with and providing info to Yoo and presumably Koester about the “real” info, this would go a helluva long way towards a revamp on that OPR opinion.

Yoo’s pal Rotunda (I think, I’d have to go check, my mind is mush), makes the point in his letter that if there were facts known by the DOJ lawyers and not included, then of course, THAT would make for a very different outcome in determining their prof responsibilty violations …

The 12-3-2007 doc that someone – redacted – “assured us that he gave regular updates to DoJ (i.e., John Yoo,redacted maybe Koester?)during this time frame (Aug 2002 Bybe memo drafting period) and DoJ was aware of the real numbers, but we were never able to verify this with DoJ, as INV mangement at the time elected not to interview witnesses outside the building” is pretty damn interesting…

…First, and most obvious, Jay Bybee’s 1 Aug 2002 memo to John Rizzo stated, in part, “Moreover, you have also orally informed us that althought some of these techniques may be used with more than once, that repetition will not be substantial because the techniques generally lose their effectiveness after several repetitions.” (p. 2) and again, “You have indicated that these acts will not be used with substantial repetition, so that there is no possibility that severe physical pain could arise from such repetition.” (p. 11). The OIG review determined that Abu Zubaydah was subjected to [redacted 2 characters?] waterboard sessions, consisting of at least 83 seperate exposures [redacted sentence] assured us that he gave regular updates to DoJ (i.e. John Yoo [redacted 2-3 words] at OLC) during this time frame, and DoJ was aware of the real numbers, but we were never able to verify this with DoJ, as INV management at the time elected not to interview witnesses outside the building. In addition to the disparity in numbers, the method of water application as recorded on the tapes was at odds with the Bybee opinion…

(My Bold)

A couple of points:

This seems to intimate that there is more confusion about just how many times AZ was waterboarded. 83 times may just be the low end counted by viewing some, but not all, videotapes.

Secondly, as EW has already observed, these seem to be the documents Durham originally withheld from the ACLU for prosecutory purposes.

It would seem that the last bolded sentence meets AG Holder’s criteria of “exceeding” the parameters of cover provided by any of the OLC opinions, and therefore qualifies for prosecution.

10/02/2002: They seem on the verge of destroying the tapes
12/02/2002: “It was a mistake to move [redacted] tapes” “no tapes are to be destroyed”

Looking through these documents and EW’s timeline, I just don’t get it.
….”move … tapes”? from where to where? why?
….”no tapes are to be destroyed” why the change of heart?
Did I miss an introductory lecture?

THe closed the black site in December. So that was the urgency. BUt November 30-December 4 (or thereabouts) McPherson did the review. While eveything we’ve seen suggests McP gave them a clean bill of health, I suspect they had their own concerns that weren’t documented. Or maybe they were just trying to get Congressional buy off. HOw interesting, though, when they briefed Goss and Harman, and DID NOT get buyoff, they ended up never summarizing that briefing?

@36 – I kind of wonder if the “move” part had to do with tapes coming into CIA in April or May to be made into official records before being returned to Thailand or wherever for holding. That’s probably not it, but it struck me that in April they were waiting for tapes on the way to be made official record copies, in Oct they were treating them as all being back wherever for safekeeping and were using a Ref A and B for the ok to destroy, then someone asks for the OIG’s ok to destroy and then they say -nope, don’t destroy and it was a mistake to move the tapes … might tie with saying, “oh crap, we never should have sent some to be made into official record copies, now the IG knows all about it and won’t ok the destruction” ??

Or not.

Do we know what the heck happened April fools in 2004 that got so redacted on their timeline doc?

Yeah – I’m thinking the mistake issue has to be something that has prevented them from being able to claim, for example as the seem to have done with cables – that someone else “owned” the tapes or to just pretend they didn’t exist, esp since they hadn’t cataloged them yet. The only move I see any reference to that might cause those kinds (and more) of issues would be a move that ended up with some vids being made into official records copies within the US.

That – and the reference to someone saying they were keeping Yoo and someone else with DOJ up to date on how things were really being done (v. what the memo said) are the two things that have struck me most – and the big doc with all the lies at the end.

Anyone wonder whether Addington and Gonzales were interested in retaining the tapes as much to keep something over Mitchell and Jessen as anything else?

Absolutely! And this is what gives me hope that copies of those tapes, or at least some of them, will turn up. Cheney & Addington –and others, I’m sure– would not have been afraid to use blackmail if it was necessary to save their sorry asses, or to achieve some other high priority objective.

We don’t. But that would have been when they were discussing referrals out of the IG REport. I suspect, though it’s just a giant Wildarsedguess, that they talked Helgerson out of referring either AZ’s treatment or the earlier destruction of the tapes by asking him to do further review of them. NOt sure if that every happened–I know Jello Jay kept asking for the details on this stuff.

“Were you aware of the specific EIT used on Nashiri” (emph added) as their interview question 24 sure makes it sound as if there was no need to refresh the interviewee’s recollection as to which of the many EITs that had been authorized they were talking about.

What is that “CIA INTERROGATION OF ABU ZUBAYDAH March 2001- January 2003” document that looks like it was generated in 2007? Was that a briefing to the intel committees? If so, who authorized the statements, in 2007, about AZ being a senior lt, high value operational, etc. etc. etc. – all the fibs?

I’ll be interested to see how EW timelines it all, but it looks to me like in Oct 2002 the cables said to start taping over and destroy what they had, in Dec 2002 the cable says don’t destroy, but doesn’t mention taping over, and then – argh, I’ve already forgotten, but then I think there’s something after the Dec 2002 memo that says NOT to tape over.

I guess that highlights the distinction between the tapes as more durable physical artifacts vs. the more ephemeral recordings of the torture sessions that were made on them. Subpoenas etc. for the tapes themselves could be honored without risk if the recordings were no longer on the tapes. The recordings could be transferred/copied off the tapes before the tapes were erased, taped over, or physically destroyed. The transfers/copies could have been anywhere, and/or could have been made in secret, so absent a properly worded description — perhaps very very difficult to write — a subpoena or other investigatory request would miss the copies/transfers entirely.

Shorter: What the investigators really wanted was the recordings, not the tapes. Were they smart enough to word the requests/demands that way?

Oops, sorry, it was before the Dec 2002, just later in the dump (p. 30 of 122) a directive went out it looks like in May to “please do not tape over or edit videos of Abu Zubaydah’s interrogations” [but doesn’t mention anyone else or a game plane for other interrogations] and “please preserve all videos” and it specifically mentions as one of the reasons that the videos “offer evidence” emph added of will be valuable in the future apart from actionable intel.

Another thing that I had meant to put up before that I thought was a biggie was from p 40 of 122 (Aug 03?). There, they seem to specifically start narrowing down from tapes to “magnetic media” but then has

“PLEASE NOTE THAT THE INVENTORY LIST SHOULD ONLY CONTAIN LISTING OF MAGNETIC MEDIA FROM [REDACTED] PROJECT. AND NOT/NOT THE VIDEOTAPES IN [REDACTED] POSSESSION.”

I would guess/hope that AZ’s lawyers and Senate/House Intel committee lawyers etc. would have, a long time ago, admonished good ol redacted that videotapes in their possession shouldn’t be destroyed.

Makes you wonder what kind of discovery requests were served or preservation orders given and subpoenas etc. served etc. etc. with respect to vidoes of torture that they claim are in someone else’s (but a known someone else) possession.

I think the not/not is just the way they highlight (not, repeat NOT) but even a highlight can have a lot of different meanings.

I think there are several things that point to the Mitchell/Jessen crew having all kinds of things that CIA wanted to be able to keep for reghoulingtooling at a later date, while being able to claim nothing in “their” or “gov” custody. As per earlier above, I was struck by the assertion that there were cables about the torture that CIA couldn’t turn over bc they were “owned” by someone else??

The cable references to me sound like someone who is pretty desperate to not say more than they have to, but who really wants to make sure that too much stuff doesn’t all get destroyed. So they ended up having to make sure they emphasize only project xyz and HEY YOU, IN CASE YOU DIDN’T GET IT, NONE OF THE STUFF *THOSE* GUYS HAVE.

I’ll let you and EW sort it, though.

I’m still most struck back on the legal end, with the fact that there are supposedly claims from CIA that Yoo and someone else at OLC knew more than they put in their memos and OPR having two CIA attys not cooperating (along with Ashcroft and others) and even Yoo’s own shining light hanging him out as having big problems if there were evidence that he did know more and not include it.

I think the not/not is just the way they highlight (not, repeat NOT) but even a highlight can have a lot of different meanings.

I think you’re probably right. But I went looking for other possibilities precisely because I thought the retention of the videotapes was required by law. Is that right? Because if it is, then the highlighting of a fact opposite to law doesn’t make sense. Only if it is not actually required by law, then the highlighting makes sense, to remind the reader that they are not required to retain the tapes.

Depends on what you mean by law in the “required by law” and upon some things we don’t know for sure yet on the way the interrogations were done and by whom and to what extent they were intended for purposes “other than” (as one doc admits) intel operations and …

I’d say that by the time they were destroyed, though, even with the limits on what we know, absolutely NO GOVERNMENT LAWYER who knew about them would be free from professional responsiblity and responsibility to the various courts with respect to their preservation or notice to the courts before destruction.

For the rest, I think that would take a long comment with a lot of blanks for what we don’t know.

Remember that we first learned of this when EDVA had to tell Brinkema that they had found a video of at least one of the people requested by Moussaoui–I think either al-Libi or (more likely) bin al-SHibh.

Nice catch. “Magnetic media” would have been limited to video or audio tapes and would have excluded digital copies and hard descriptions, notes, etc. (if any). Do we know where the limitation came from?

(Sorry if this has already been figured out:) Could the reason why destroying the tapes was internally deemed OK as a matter of law and SOP (as per @27) be that the recordings on the tapes had already been copied to other media (for example to the hard drives mentioned @8) and they were relying on retention of the copies rather than the camera originals?

If so, it might be worth looking at the exact wording used in all the requests for production of things — were the investigators & the judge only asking for tapes, so that their failure to produce the copies that had been made onto other media would not have constituted contempt/evasion?

Whoa there. Magnetic media is broader than video tape, not narrower. Hard drives are magnetic. CDs, DVDs, thumb drives, and SDRAM drives are not magnetic. So limiting a request to magnetic excludes important backup / copy media. There are also camcorders that record straight to optical, so that would also exclude camera originals made that way.

It’s broader in some ways and much more specific than a somewhat colloquial “videotapes” that, like kleenex, to most would mean more than Kleenex.

I think both aspects are important – they aren’t asking for a destruction of non-magnetic media copies that might exist, but I also thought, since hard drives do factor in elsewhere, if this was really someone trying to give a heads up on hard drives without a paper trail (or cable trail) of mentionging hard drives, since much of the emphasis was on VCR tapes.

I’m trying to think – and not being a techie can’t really – of the hows and whys and whats and wherefors of all the stuff you would have on the one hand accumulated on a hard drive with respect to the torture, and on the other hand want destroyed from a hard drive, when supposedly the only thing anyone is worried about at the time is VCR tapes.

Not a lot of flat out questions on that topic that seem to appear in anything released (including questions for interviewees) is there?

You’d think one of the very first and most prominent of questions would have to do with people’s knowledge of any and all kinds of copies and facsimiles and duplications and yada yada and what they were, how they were made, who had accesss, etc.

That’s got a lot of cred, but I still have to think and wonder a bit about authorizing the destruction of hard drives with who knows what on them under the cover of destroying them for possible torture tape copies on them.

Not that you need more, I just tend to spec a lot. It seems a bit drastic – destroying hard drives, but more so it seems to indicate that there’s a reason to destroy them and if it is the torture tape tie alone, you have to at least wonder how the hard drives were used in connection with the torture taping projects. Why were copies put on the hard drives would be one thing to have clarified. jmo.

Well, one reason for a video copy to exist on an HD is that the process of making a DVD usually involves first getting a working copy of the recording off the video tape and onto the HD (‘capture’ in the parlance). Loosely speaking, that HD copy is processed by the DVD burner/maker program and used to create the re-built recording that it writes out to the DVD.

Of course there may be other reasons, too. Some folks like to buy lots of HDs and use them for backup, kinda like tape cartridges. Or maybe they couriered the HDs elsewhere routinely for analysis and archiving and didn’t want to take the time onsite to make further copies. Etc.

Would you ever believe georgis dicks or condis voice are on the tapes? Just speculating the worst case scenario. If not why not ?

And one more thing about the guy transcribing the tapes to so call verify compliance with the rules, I noticed he went from viewing to viewing at fast forward I guess to avoid hearing the tortured screams, pleadings, begging in a foreign language for some MERCY. which you avoid at F/F.

The term ‘magnetic media’ is used to describe any record format where information is recorded and retrieved in the form of a magnetic signal.

The common types of magnetic media are:

* magnetic tape, including audio cassettes and reel-to-reel tapes, videotapes, computer tapes both on open reels and in cassettes, and tapes used in digital recording processes
* magnetic hard disks
* magnetic floppy disks or diskettes

To Hmmm’s suppositions @52, keep in mind that in 2002, it was not usual to copy to other than magnetic media, unless perhaps CD, which is optical media. I feel confident that, lumped with the references to hard disks, and using the words “magnetic media” they were referring to floppies, perhaps the Zip drive floppy then still popularly in use. On the other hand, due to technological ignorance, or sloppiness in writing, they may have meant some kind of CD disk, and simply lumped it in with the hard drive and still called it “magnetic media”.

Well, I have a slightly different perspective on the technology availability timelines there*, and by that reckoning optical is a prime candidate, in fact the only smart way to do the job of keeping the recordings. By 2002 Zip drives were out of fashion even in the consumer market, largely because of the ready and cheap availability of writable optical drives and media — certainly including writable CDs, but also writable DVDs by that point. But these optical technologies were available quite a bit earlier than that in the industrial/professional video equipment markets, while they were still economically unfeasible for consumer products, and we have no reason to believe the tirturers were buying their gear at Best Buy. Likely pro/industrial gear.

Lotsa reasons. Tape was still the most common camera original format at that time. In industrial/pro video, a format called S-VHS was (is?) commonly used for its better-than-consumer picture and sound quality; it uses a more-or-less VHS like tape cartridge but is wider or runs at faster speed or some darn thing. There are (were?) digital video tape cartridge formats too, with a wide range of quality. Tape cartridges are very convenient to organize, and don’t leave incriminating recordings in the camera itself like a modern camcorder with an internal hard drive could do.

That said, it would also have been possible to record direct to the hard drive in (or connected to) a computer, rather than to a tape first. In that case there would be no tape to produce in a subpoena, and the recording could be made to disappear by deleting the file (and wiping the hard drive), and the recording would still be copyable when needed.

Remember elsewhere they use the term VCR. THough of course a VCR doesn’t record.

Is this some kind of snark, or sarcasm, as suggested @ 88? If so, it has sailed right over my head. After all, the “R” in VCR does stand for “recorder.” Per the Wikipedia:

The videocassette recorder (or VCR, more commonly known in the UK and Ireland as the video recorder or video machine), is a type of video tape recorder that uses removable videotape cassettes containing magnetic tape to record audio and video from a television broadcast so it can be played back later.

And I am well into my first cuppa coffee this morning (tho it is decaf).
What am I missing here?

Please note that inventory list should only contain listing of magnetic media from [redacted] project and not/not the videotapes in [redacted] possession.

What “project” could this refer to? A “project” separate from the interrogation per se? Or ran in conjunction with the interrogation, as say, an experiment would be?

The December 20, 2002 usage:

Continued retention of these tapes is not/not required by law

Could the double negative not/not refer to a quote from other material or communications, such that, in the case of the latter, it would make sense if the author meant, “Continued retention of these tapes is not “not required by law”, i.e., it is required, and that’s why it’s a security risk.

In the earlier case of the “magnetic media”, we would see it means, “Please note that inventory list should only contain listing of magnetic media from [redacted] project and not “not the videotapes in [redacted] possession”. Someone is making sure that there is no confusion. They do not want the videotapes in “[redacted] possession” mixed in with the other media list.

Two kinds of storage media, two kinds of inventories! The reference to a “project” (the word does not recur in this set of documents) may also mean two kinds of operations upon the same set of prisoner(s).

Magnetic media we know includes the hard disks, but the other kind is, given the time frame, most likely some kind of floppy or removable disk, since these are types of magnetic storage for computers.

“Something to operate in the shadows.”-Joint Special Operations Command?

“Grey Fox” [SOCOM]?

[…] Rumsfeld planned and lobbied for more than two years before getting Presidential authority, in a series of findings and executive orders, to use military commandos for covert operations. One of his first steps was bureaucratic: to shift control of an undercover unit, known then as the Gray Fox (it has recently been given a new code name), from the Army to the Special Operations Command (SOCOM), in Tampa. Gray Fox was formally assigned to SOCOM in July, 2002, at the instigation of Rumsfeld’s office, which meant that the undercover unit would have a single commander for administration and operational deployment. […]

that might have been been done, in part, to provide evaluational and/or instructional material.

– evaluational: so others could see how az responded to jessen’s torture regimen. recall the whole point of some tortures of az was to see how far the torturers could go in torturing before az began disassociating.

– instructional: to show others (including potential torturers) the specific techniques used to torture az.

in short, there might have been non-legal concerns that drove copying az’s torture.

And to the extent that Cheney really was as paranoid as they have tried to make it sound – and not just gung ho over power and torture – then anyone who really had any baseline worry of any kind that AZ truly DID know something important – they aren’t going to want everything destroyed. They are going to want to be able to have other translators and behaviorists etc. be able to sift through for clues if something comes up later in antoher rendition/interrogation that might be applicable.

I expect John Durham is savvy enough to have gone after the question of whether there is any visual record of Abu Zubaydah’s interrogation on any media anywhere on the planet. If it were to exist, Mitchell and Jessen would be the most likely place to look. This was their personal baby, and records of such things have an almost talisman-like appeal. At the risk of a gross [or perhaps apt] example, serial killers are frequently convicted based on their inability to destroy their souvenirs.

But even without the visuals, this stuff is pretty damning – that November 10, 2005 email to Dusty Foggo in particular. Fill in the names that were redacted, and it reads like an indictment, maybe several. I await the master parsers to put all of this together, but I, for one, am beginning to look towards Durham’s investigation as one that might begin to move this block of granite.